Two ugly facts conspire to make such an escape for Trump possible: it has been assumed thus far that Trump would not ‘fess up to knowledge of the contract with Stormy Daniels because to do so would be to submit to the embarrassment of having to admit that he had an affair, or at least a sexual encounter with her, which he then sought to cover up with a pay-off and a non-disclosure agreement, but in point of fact, Trump and his team have realized that there is no embarrassment in simply denying any such ‘contact’ took place. They can call Stormy Daniels a liar and rely on their usual obfuscations to do the rest of the work; for the Republican base, the misogynistic assessment of her as ‘only a porn star’ is enough. The claim that a non-disclosure agreement was the best way to get a ‘hustler’ or a ‘shyster’ to ‘shut up’ will find favor with the Republican ‘base’ quite easily. So the ‘escape’ picture emerges: the non-disclosure agreement was made ‘legally’ to silence a nuisance; the president did speak falsely on occasion, but never under oath in a court of law; his conversations with reporters are like his other lie-ridden interactions with the media, that is, nothing distinctive. Moreover, we can rely on the legal system to deliver the lightest slap on the wrist possible to Trump when it comes to violations of campaign finance law; the rigorous conditions of ‘knowingly and willingly’ required for a felony violation will be hard to meet. The payments Trump made to Cohen can be ‘contextualized’ in some fashion to make them ever so more ‘appropriate’ and not transgressive of legality; they can be made to look less like flagrant violations of campaign finance law if dressed up with the right kinds of language.

No matter what the political costs, Trump’s legal team has at least devised a scheme for reducing their client’s legal jeopardy; it ‘works’ in conjunction with a particular social setting in which he can also rely on his sentencing on any possible violations of campaign finance laws to be rather gentle. Embarrassment as a social force only works when the subject responds to it accordingly or sees it working as intended; in the current media setting and in the current psycho-political mood no embarrassment is enough. All will be tolerated in the name of inducing liberal rage. Fuck your feelings indeed.

First, as Iran-Contra reminds us, as Americans, we are too embarrassed to punish the truly powerful; it would be too déclassé, too sordid, in excessively poor taste. It would be a reminder that our judgment was flawed, that we were wrong to trust the rich and the powerful, that we had once again, mistakenly put our faith in the powerful, trusting that their ‘magic’ would rub off on us. For us to punish the powerful would be to punish ourselves; after all, we have ambitions of becoming powerful too, one day, and we do not want to set a bad precedent. Our tastes run more to punishing lackeys and assistants, the ones who usually take the fall and then mumble, hopefully publicly, some words of contrition and repentance.

There will be no premature end to the Trump presidency; he will serve out his term till the 2020 electoral season, during which at some point, he will dramatically declare that with all his work ‘done’ he will now retire to spend more time with his family. (That is, he will seamlessly and smoothly move on to a new television talk show, the lecture circuit, and a ginormous advance from the trade house ‘lucky’ enough to publish his memoir. This is a classic American tale and it will only get better in the retelling.)

Why is this so? Because little has changed in the American political landscape–despite the air of mounting scandal and electoral disaster. The Republicans will not impeach him as long as they control the House of Representatives, for reasons too often made to bear repeating there. The Democrats, for their part, remain unlikely to launch impeachment proceedings even if they come to power; they will be too easily distracted by talk of how they should ‘move on,’ not deepen the ‘partisan divide,’ not practice a ‘destructive politics,’ or ‘give the appearance of being vindictive.’ The electoral calculus predominates here as it has always; despite prognostications of a ‘blue wave’ in 2018, the President’s own approval ratings remain solid. No matter how his brand may affect others, his own remains relatively pristine. The best, least damaging electoral strategy, one that minimizes their losses, is for the Republicans to keep Trump in power in return for a quiet promise that he will not seek re-election in 2020. This is something Trump can be easily persuaded to do; he will have spent enough time in the limelight to ensure himself a quiet retirement, and ensured enough money to secure his children’s future. He will also have realized that the presidency can be an unpleasant business.

The legal ground has been prepared for such a move. The presidential pardon has been tested and found to be adequate; it has been used on undesirables like Joe Arpaio and Scooter Libby; there has been no opposition to its use; Trump now knows he can line up a few lackeys to take the fall for him, once they have had the prospect of a presidential pardon held out for them. No revelation from the Stormy Daniels case, other than a good to honest legal indictment, will trouble Trump even remotely; his ‘base’ already thinks he has acquired baller status for having slept with a porn star–no matter what came afterwards. Trump’s legal advisers will undoubtedly put him on notice that his legal jeopardy is greater with him outside the Oval office than inside it; and Republican Party pollsters will support them in this claim by noting that no matter how bad the defeat in 2018 in the House, they will not lose by too big a margin thanks to Republican gerrymandering and vote suppression efforts. This is a party whose main platform is ‘stick it to the liberals!’; this party will not expel the man who won them the 2016 elections on this platform.

One response to such a claim is that the electoral and political calculus has changed over the course of the Trump presidency: the main tax bill has been passed, the Obamacare mandate has been rolled back, electoral losses in ‘red districts’ indicates the famous ‘blue wave’ – and so Trump is expendable, to be replaced by the doltish Mike Pence. This response does not add up; the Republicans might be facing a ‘blue wave’ in 2018, but they know that: a) the ‘blue wave’ is more swell, less tsunami and b) that the ‘blue wave’ they face in 2018 will be nothing compared the massive abandonment they will face from Republican voters in 2020 if Trump is made to resign or impeached. To hand a victory to the progressives, the libtards, the alt-left, the bleeding hearts, the Democrats, the left, liberals is political suicide. The many surprising electoral wins for Democrats in recent months, indeed, ever since Trump came to power, are less the result of Republicans abandoning Trump or suddenly developing a conscience or some compassion; rather, it is because energized Democrats have turned out in greater numbers. There is no indication that any Republican ‘defection’ has taken place.

America is stuck with the Trump presidency; it will be stuck with the Republican Party much longer.

All–especially my fellow American citizens–praise the cruise missile. This marvelous weapon, “a guided missile used against terrestrial targets…remains in the atmosphere and flies the major portion of its flight path at approximately constant speed.” It is “designed to deliver a large warhead over long distances with high precision.” It can be launched off-shore from a ship, or from aircraft, obviating the need for the infamous ‘boots on the ground.’ The cruise missile allows foreign policy to be conducted from afar; no messy ‘contact’ with the ‘enemy’ is required. Launchings from ships typically take place at night, making for pleasing visuals tailor-made for display on the nightly news. There is something of the robot in the cruise missile; think of it as a self-driving car that likes to blow up other things. It is the modern saber; those who rattle it know its pleasing features all too well. Patriotism and war-mongering might be last refuge of the scoundrel, but it is hard to resist the temptation to make war in the way that the cruise missile permits. US presidents are not the only ones seduced by cruise missiles; military planners the world over, going back perhaps to Adolf Hitler, whose fantasies most definitely included the legends V-1 and V-2, have long dreamed about winning wars by merely showering their enemies with enough cruise missiles to make other kinds of military intervention unnecessary.

The firings of these cruise missiles might, for good measure, be accompanied by the firing of Special Counsel Robert Mueller. Fox News, that feeder of talking points, and indeed, entire scripts, to the Republican Party, has been beating the ‘fire Mueller’ drum for a while now. The Republican Party is well aware their base has been fed this line and is well prepared for the Mother of All Firings. So, I think, should be the American nation.

There might be some disputation over whether the Donald Trump-Republican Party unholy alliance is politically effective in terms of the consolidation of executive power or actual legislative activity–seasoned political observers consider the Trump administration to have been an utter failure on both fronts–but there can be little doubt about the extent of the damage the combination of the Trump administration and the Republican Party have done to American political institutions. They have done so in two ways: first, they have systematically captured components of the electoral and legislative process, exploiting their structural weaknesses and their dependence on good-willed political actors (which the Republicans most certainly aren’t); second, they have engaged in a wholesale rhetorical condemnation and ridicule of central and peripheral political institutions like the judiciary and the press.

In the former domain, we find a bag of dirty tricks that includes gerrymandering of state electoral districts, wholly fraudulent investigations into voter fraud, repression of voter registration, filibusters, supermajority requirements to call bills to vote on the floor, the stunning refusal to vote on a Supreme Court nominee following the death of Antonin Scalia, and so on. In the latter domain, we find the ceaseless vilification of judges who do not align their votes in the ideological dimensions preferred by Trump, an utter disregard for all manner of ethical proprieties (c.f. the absence of any sensitivity to the non-stop conflicts of interest that are this administration’s trademark political maneuver), and a wholesale rejection of any standards of truth or evidence in the making of substantive factual political claims.

The American polity will be rid of the Trump administration via resignation or electoral rejection soon enough; perhaps it will even remove the Republican Party from power from all three branches of government. It will not, however, be rid of the damage caused to its political institutions any time soon; it will take a long time to for this damnable stain to be removed, if at all. Cynicism about political institutions and practices is as American as various species of fruit pies; it is the natural result of a systematic effort by the political class to bring about widespread disengagement with national and state-level political processes, thus clearing the field for those seeking greater control over them. That effort has been spectacularly successful over the years; low voter turnout is its most visible indicator. The efforts of this administration and the Republican Party, aided and abetted, it must be said, by the Democratic Party, have pushed that cynicism still further, into realms where the abdication of political responsibility and the loud proclamation of moral bankruptcy has come to seem a political and intellectual virtue. So overt has the abuse of the political system been that a collective weariness with politics has prompted an ongoing and continuing abandonment of the field; better to walk away from this cesspool than to risk further contamination. That abandonment clears the way for further capture and degradation, of course; precisely the effect intended (see above.)

As usual, anxious liberals and American citizens all over the nation are waiting, with bated breath and a dollop of some old-fashioned American optimism, for the Great Abandonment: that crystalline moment when the Republican Party will decide that enough is enough, issue a condemnation–with teeth–of Donald Trump, begin scurrying away from his sinking ship, and for good measure, initiate impeachment proceedings. There’s been many moments like this: grab-their-pussy and the various bits of La Affaire Russia have served to provide the best examples of these in the recent past. Neo-Nazis in Charlottesville, and their usual brand of toxic racism and violence have now provided the latest instance of a possible ‘he can’t survive this’ moment–‘this is when the Republicans grow a vertebra, denounce Nazism–oh, how difficult!–and its sympathizers and enablers, and bring this particular Trump Tower crashing down.

Unfortunately this Godot-ish vigil will have to persist a little longer. Perhaps till the end of the Trump presidency. Condemnation of the President has been issued by some: Mitt Romney and Marco Rubio for instance. But there is no party-level move to censure; there is no sign that there is widespread movement among the Republicans to either distance themselves from Trump or do anything more than issue the easiest political statement of all regarding disapproval for Nazis.

The electoral calculus, the bottom-line politically, is that Republican voters care little about Trump’s being in bed with white supremacists, the KKK, and sundry other deplorables; they elected him to assuage their racial anxieties, and he continues to do that by standing up even for cross-burning, swastika tattooed, hooded folk. A Republican Congressman or Senator who denounces Trump risks electoral suicide; the Trump ‘base’ will turn on him or her with indecent haste. Under the circumstances, far better to issue generic denouncements and move on, hoping and knowing this storm will blow over. When private business corporations dump offensive employees–perhaps for racist, abusive speech or other kinds of socially offensive behavior–they do so on the basis of a calculus that determines the nature and extent of the economic loss they will have to bear if they persist in supporting their offending employee; when it is apparent that customers will not tolerate that behavior, the decision is made for the employer. That same calculus in the case of Republican voters suggests there is no loss forthcoming–the strategy suggested is precisely the one on display: a little bluster, a little obfuscation, some hemming and hawing, a few offensive suggestions that the offensive behavior was in response to other behavior ‘asking for it’ and so on. Still riding on S. S. Donald Trump, sailing right on over the edge to the depths below–even as the merry band of carpetbaggers on board keep their hands in the national till.

I’ve made this point before on this blog (here; here; here; here); I repeat myself. Repetition is neurotic; I should cease and desist. But it is not easy when neurotic repetition is visible elsewhere–in this case, in the American polity.

Charity, ostensibly a central moral and social American institution, is alive and flourishing–online, on crowdfunding sites, as thousands and thousands of perfect strangers and sometimes acquaintances and friends and family, line up to donate to the latest plea for help. (Perhaps someone needs a vital organ transplant, extended chemotherapy and radiation, or a new, life-saving alternative therapy; or perhaps, like most Americans, they went into a hospital hoping to emerge healthier, and instead, found themselves facing a foreclosure-inducing medical bill.) As Bloomberg reports in an article unironically titled ‘America’s Healthcare Crisis Is a Gold Mine For Crowdfunding–later changed to ‘American Health Care Tragedies Are Taking Over Crowdfunding’:

Crowdfunding platforms such as GoFundMe and YouCaring have turned sympathy for Americans drowning in medical expenses into a cottage industry….Business is already booming, and its leaders expect the rapid growth to continue no matter what happens on the Hill. “Whether it’s Obamacare or Trumpcare, the weight of health-care costs on consumers will only increase,” said Dan Saper, chief executive officer of YouCaring. “It will drive more people to try and figure out how to pay health-care needs, and crowdfunding is in its early days as a way to help those people.”

Indeed:

Growth has been rapid….one million campaigns set up over the previous year had raised $1 billion from nearly 12 million donors. By February 2016, the total was $2 billion. In October 2016, it was $3 billion, from 25 million donors….GoFundMe had indicated that $930 million of the $2 billion raised in the period the study analyzed was from medical campaigns….medical fundraisers made up 70 percent of GiveForward’s campaigns. The combined companies have 8 million donors who have contributed $800 million to a wide range of campaigns. A big part…was donated to medical campaigns…It was approaching 50 percent of all fundraisers at YouCaring before the acquisition, and the growth rate is set to triple this year.

Indeed, no matter what the flavor of the current healthcare system, it will not take care of most Americans, and neither will it do anything to drive down the rising costs of healthcare. Short of progressive taxation, a national single-payer system, and extensive structural reform to bring the American healthcare system into line with the ‘best practices’–both financial and clinical–of the best national healthcare systems in the world, Americans look destined to continue pay the highest rates for healthcare in the world, while receiving outcomes that can be described, at best, as ‘mediocre.’ In these conditions, the success of crowdfunding campaigns is entirely unexpected and unsurprising; ‘look to private resources’ is the fairly explicit message of the current healthcare system, and it is there that Americans have turned. ‘Private resources’ are normally taken to mean financial support from family; Americans seem to have found a much larger family of sorts; a blessing of a kind, one supposes.

But mostly, reactions to this state of affairs can hardly afford to be sanguine. Such methods of paying for healthcare costs suffer from too much contingency; some campaigns succeed, yet others fail. Perhaps your pitch was not ‘moving’ enough; perhaps you did not include the right pictures of cute families; perhaps potential donors were financially exhausted. The health of the citizens of any country, let alone one with pretensions to greatness, should not be riven by so much uncertainty, so much dependence on the unpredictable largesse of others.

Around the nation, there is much talk of Donald Trump firing the special prosecutor Robert Mueller, whose charge is the so-called ‘Russia investigation,’ and whose acquisitions of ‘top criminal lawyers’ has resulted in him putting together a prosecution ‘dream team.’ These are merely rumors for the time being–and strange rumors for liberals and progressives to be getting so excited about given that this is a nation which has generated a human rights crisis for itself through its mass incarceration policies–but speculation based on rumors is always quite delicious, so let me be a little self-indulgent. This firing is eagerly anticipated by, for instance, Rick Wilson and Adam Schiff, both of whom wrote and posted variants of what I will call the ‘bring-it-on rant.’ Please, Donnie, fire Mueller, because that act, and I really mean it this time, will bring about the impeachment we all so fervently desire, and if not, something even better will happen: the American people will finally, and I mean it this time, finally, realize that we are a nation without laws, that the republic is dead, that the Republican Party is morally and intellectually bankrupt and so on.We haven’t gotten the memo yet, but once you fire Mueller, we will, and then we can get on with the business of rescuing and reconstructing and restructuring the American Republic.

There are camels and there are straws and there camel’s backs and last straws. Never has the meeting of the twain been so elusive in American politics.

Trump can fire Mueller, in broad daylight, on Fifth Avenue, and nothing would happen to him. Nothing, that is, from the folks that some Americans think should be doing something about it: Congressional and Senate Republicans. As Paul Starr makes clear, having a weakened President–and let there not be any doubt about it, Trump is a weakened President, incapable of asserting and securing power in the ways that the pros of old knew how to–is the best news possible for the Republican Party’s legislative agenda. Moving legislation along is the least such an enfeebled leader can do; prop me up, he says, and his minions comply, even as they press a quill into his hands and place an ink pot nearby, while they lick their fingers and turn over the pages, all the while pointing to the dotted lines to be initialed and signed.

We should remember that Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton survived scandals that–in their time–were just as bad, just as ‘fatal’ to the presidency. Trump’s survival is all but guaranteed because he is a popular president among a vital, electorally crucial, demographic, and because by functioning as the dysfunctional, drunk, senile, grandparent, he can be propped up to provide cover to the real wrecking crew.

Moreover, let us not forget, the 2018 elections are in, er, 2018, which is a long ways away. Memories are short these days; the outrage over the Mueller firing, like all the other ‘this-is-gonna-sink-Trump-sure’ events, it will produce its ripples and then sink beneath the surface. The republic is politically unwell, and its malaise will not be healed by the mere removal of the most superficial pathology visible.